People United For Sustainable Housing (PUSH), a West Side activist group and property developer, launched a campaign against National Fuel nearly two years ago to obtain monies from National Fuel and its customers to fund PUSH's low-income housing rehabilitation and weatherization projects.

At first, the company was taken aback by the intensity of PUSH's campaign, beginning with a public protest and media event at which a letter demanding a meeting with David Smith, National Fuel's CEO, was ceremoniously presented. PUSH later focused its attention on National Fuel's Conservation Incentive Program (CIP), a customer-funded program which since 2007 has provided customer incentives, including appliance rebates and low-income housing weatherization, designed to conserve natural gas. 

It soon became clear that PUSH's methods were designed at every step to attract the attention of the media and portray the CIP as a program designed by National Fuel for the sole purpose of enhancing the company's image at the expense of low-income customers, despite the facts: National Fuel's CIP is an all-inclusive program that conforms to state guidelines, has been repeatedly approved by state regulators, is fully transparent and is audited by third-party experts. In addition, the CIP dedicates proportionately more funding to low-income programs than every other utility conservation program in the state. Since the CIP provides program benefits directly to customers, PUSH itself has not been a recipient of CIP funding for its preferred programs. It is for this reason that PUSH wants the company's CIP to change, as illustrated by PUSH's latest iteration of its demands for the CIP.

PUSH's programs are funded largely by taxpayer monies and grants. PUSH's campaign against National Fuel has been focused on capturing - for PUSH's preferred programs - the CIP funding stream paid by National Fuel's customers. PUSH now wants National Fuel to send all of the CIP funding to Albany, and has demanded a matching donation from National Fuel's shareholders, to augment the state's massive statewide fund established under Green Jobs Green New York (GJGNY) legislation. By taking the CIP's local funding out of local control, CIP - including the popular appliance rebate program - would terminate. But PUSH itself would then qualify for the CIP funding stream through its participation as an unregulated "constituency-based organization" under GJGNY, and as an owner of housing potentially qualified to receive GJGNY benefits. 

PUSH's tactics are new to National Fuel, and we believe new to Western New York. Modeled on corporate "shakedown" methods of organizations such as the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and others like it, PUSH uses a combination of rallies, protests and other public events to establish its messaging, while its members and supporters also lobby politicians to exert pressure on National Fuel through the legislative and regulatory processes.  Community support for PUSH, shallow as it is outside of PUSH and its allies, is based less on the facts than on public reaction to PUSH's carefully controlled narrative.        

Some have asked why National Fuel refuses to simply meet with PUSH and talk. National Fuel executives have met personally with PUSH members and allies on two separate occasions. Those meetings failed to establish an issues-based dialogue and, instead, the campaign against National Fuel metastasized beyond the company's utility business into other operations that have nothing to do with PUSH's demands.

PUSH's latest campaign message publicly "questions National Fuel's policies" on such things as executive compensation - most of which is not funded by utility customers - and the sufficiency, in PUSH's opinion, of National Fuel's charitable activities. For Western New York's corporate philanthropists, PUSH's decision to attack National Fuel's charitable giving is a disturbing development indeed.

While cities like Boston or Chicago may have a base of private employers large enough to weather anti-corporate "shakedown" campaigns of a PUSH and its kind, Buffalo does not. The problem in Buffalo is not "bad policies" by the few corporate employers who remain in the area; the problem is that there are not enough corporate employers. The area's economic development agencies have tools to attract and retain private employers, but there is little they can do to neutralize the radically anti-business demands of self-styled, unelected "community organizations" accountable to nobody, and who presumptuously claim to represent "the people." The predictable result is that employers, and potential employers, will merely take jobs someplace else.  

National Fuel will never be able to satisfy PUSH, nor should it. With more than $7 million in combined giving since 2005, National Fuel Gas Co. and its employees are among the area's most generous donors. Over the years we have partnered with hundreds of charitable organizations, and we recognize the importance of corporate giving and volunteerism. More importantly, National Fuel's principal contributions to the communities it serves - in the form of employment, investment, contracting and taxes - are significant, and befitting of one of the few major public companies that remain headquartered in the region. We wish that there were more large, private employers like National Fuel in Western New York and hope that PUSH and its allies can recognize that, like it or not, they will have to work with, not against, corporations and corporate executives in order to achieve our shared interest in improving the lot of all Western New Yorkers, in all communities and neighborhoods.

Michael Reville is assistant vice president and chief regulatory counsel for National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp.